


To Infinity and Beyond

by JuniorWoofles



Series: MCU Mix Bag [16]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Ficlet Collection, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-03-28 20:55:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 3,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13912044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JuniorWoofles/pseuds/JuniorWoofles
Summary: 50 Ficlets in the 50 days leading up to Infinity War





	1. Tony Stark

Forged in fire, worked out of steel and pain and literal heartbreak, came a man and a suit as one. There was the man who existed before the bombing but he was a man who didn't know the cost of war. The man who came out of the fire knew the value of freedom. He won his freedom by his own hands and his own merits, clunking and clumsily blinking out into the sun.

He was a showman, broken as he may be, and that part of his spirit was unchanged. He could change the world: provide them with more than just weapons. He could provide them with a means of survival. It was his secret to keep, and his to tell. He shared it with the world and found a new world from the wreckage.

He had been solitary but now he was a part of a team. Now he was a leader of sorts and he tried to stand by his new principles and his old. He was older now, mature, and he had a newfound sense of family in a way that he hadn't felt for years. He had friends he could count on, people who had been through their own hells and who would roll their eyes at his humour and stay exactly where he needed them to be.

He'd come out of hell but he wasn't the same man. He hid behind a suit of armour all his life but now, now he was learning to let people in.


	2. Pepper Potts

Aspects of her job had changed a lot over time. She went from personal assistant to the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world. Some aspects never changed. She was still running around after Tony, making sure that he was still a functioning human being.

There was the beginning, running around trying to keep up with his every whim, making sure he had what he needed when he needed it. He was slightly unpredictable but he was just distracted by all of the thoughts running around that he was constantly trying to chase. Then there was the gravel, waiting for him to come back to her, tears threatening to spill out. Tears that were played off with a joke because there was no other way to express the relief that three months of pain and heartache and uncertainty were over. Tony was home, almost in one piece, and that was enough for her to keep going with the way things were.

Things were not as they had been before, now Tony was more reckless, more determined, more aware of the way things stood in the world and how he had been implicated in all of it. Then there was a suit and a joke about a worried girlfriend waiting.

At the time she ignored it but she came to fill that role pretty well. She could be concerned for him, and love him, and be strong for him when everything else was burning and crumbling. Some things had changed over time, but not everything.


	3. Jarvis

He was always there, ready with the information or the schematics or the data as required. He was running diagnostics in the background, checking the schedule, fielding calls and keeping Tony connected to the world outside of his newest project. He was the in between, the go to, the solution, the one ready with the answers to the questions Tony had only just formed. He was there in the background to keep an eye on Tony, to help him, to run everything. He was the silent moderator making sure that Tony had everything he could ever need, anything he could ever want, all ready as soon as he decided he wanted it. They were a team in perfect harmony, as synchronised as a man and his A.I. could be. Jarvis was an advancement, ahead of the game, but he was Mr Stark’s, and by extension, Mr Stark’s family. Jarvis wasn’t for the world. He was made for Tony’s world and in Tony’s world he remained. He belonged to Tony, to Pepper, to Rhodey, to the Avengers. He was the one they all needed and all relied on at times. He belonged to Bruce, and to Steve, and to Thor, and to Clint, and to Natasha. He belonged to the family that Tony had created for himself. He was the family that Tony had created for himself but now Tony’s family had gotten bigger and Jarvis grew with it.


	4. James "Rhodey" Rhodes

He was a military man, had that thinking drilled into him. It was how he acted, how he held himself, how he behaved. Sure, it made him the polar opposite of Tony sometimes but that was how they were used to and that was how they worked. He was the stoney face to stop the crazy puppy from running off and doing whatever he wanted to do. But stone can be moved when enthusiasm is relentless and it was hard saying no to Tony when he had his head and heart set on something.

The first time he wasn’t ready to do more than assist but the second, that second time he was ready to step into his own suit. He was ready to step up to the plate and accept the new mantle. If it wasn’t going to be him, then it wasn’t going to be anyone. He was ready to be the second, to step in and fly off and take control for himself. He was ready to become the Iron Patriot, the military asset with the name that would strike a positive cord in the hearts and wallets of America. He could do his service, the duty, the mission. He could do that, and he did do that.

He was a military man, but he wanted his freedom as much as the next person. He could have a rebrand, a new mission, a new goal, but at the heart he was still the same man who had looked at the suit in the garage and said ‘Next time.’ Now it was next time and he was ready to rock this.


	5. Happy Hogan

He had always been there for Mr Stark, to drive him about, at first. He was there for Pepper to complain to when Mr Stark was being even more crazy than usual. He was there when Tony needed a fresh set of ears to listen to him (even if all of the technobabble was completely beyond Happy and all he could was nod appropriately and let Tony go off on his tangent). Then it was the time of superheroes and the job changed.

There was tracking ex-boyfriends, and secretly Facetiming the boss, becoming head of security, following evil down the streets of L.A. and getting caught in an explosion outside of the Chinese Theatre. There was fire and the clue he left behind for Tony and the recovery afterwards. There was the getting back on his feet, as everyone else did, and doing the job he was meant to be doing. His job was important, even more so now that there were superheroes involved. There was the Tower, and moving the stuff, and begrudgingly babysitting a fifteen year old kid who he had to chaperone in Berlin. There was the security, the forgiveness, the making sure everything and everyone was still okay. There were days when he missed the simpler life of Tony Stark, billionaire playboy extraordinaire, but for the most part he would never trade in those days for anything.


	6. Phil Coulson

He was the guy in the shades standing at the back of the room surveying the madness that was about to ensue. He was the guy in the suit at the back of the room holding a folder of highly classified documents. He was the guy from the organisation with a name too long to remember and an acronym so blatantly staring them in the face yet not widely used. He was the one sent to check things out, to assess them for Fury and report back. He was the one that went out to check out, to check up on, to assess the potential Avengers before Fury came in to recruit them. He was the first guy out the door, the one in charge of new findings, the glorified babysitter prepared to go all Super Nanny on Tony’s ass if he had to.

He was the glue that drew the team together. He talked to Pepper, meet with Tony, witnessed Thor, gave the orders to Nat and Clint, and idolised Captain America. He was quick wit and sure fire and a sense of nobility and purpose that was a rare a quality to find as Uranium. He had a part to play in this and he would play every facet of the role until he reached the final curtain.

And if that final curtain was delayed so that he could have an encore; so that he could assemble a new team and nurture them and help them grow into the heroes they could be? Well it was still his role and he still new how to play it. He could find new heroes, he could find a family within these new heroes as he had with the others.


	7. Bruce Banner

There was the quiet and the calm and the collected. There was the man keeping himself to himself, losing hours, days, weeks at a time shut up in a lab trying to decode the secrets of decades gone experiments. There was the scientist with all his doctorates, with his seven phDs, who couldn’t solve the problem presented to him. There was the man, that poor man, who tried so hard only to create a monster instead of a hero. There was the defeated man, who saw no light and couldn’t see a way out of the predicament he’d placed himself in. There was the man running away, trying to find peace and work far away from a world that wanted to go against him.

There was the rage, the anger, the emotions bubbling up over the surface and crashing green and violent into the world. There was the monster, the villain, the life-saver, the hero. There was the contradictions of self-worth against the way they saw him. They saw him as an asset, as a scientist first and a contingency plan second. They saw him as a blur as he smashed into buildings and tore into the Chitauri. They saw him, saw it, as an advantage.

There was the choice between anger and peace. There were the people who gave him a family when he thought it would be best to give up on the world entirely. There were the people who saw his place in the world, as both sides of the same person, and accepted him for the value of both. They saw him as the hero he needed to be seen as. He’d spent so long thinking he’d created a monster, that he’d failed. This wasn’t failure.


	8. Nick Fury

“There was an idea, to bring together a group of remarkable people, so that when we needed them they could fight the wars we never could…”

Nick Fury was a not a man that you could call a fantasist or an idealist. He was a realist and he focused on the things that he knew. He knew the state of the world, even if he never truly saw the extent of how rotten it had become until it was too late. But he could see the world as a threat, as a danger, as vulnerable, as a state that needed protecting and defending. So he pitched an idea to make sure that when the day came that his resources wouldn’t prove strong enough that he had in his corner the necessary way to win. It was a rational plan and he was a rational man and he knew that the only way to win in a war was to have the best weapons. So he got the best people in place, gave them a way to unify, and sent them off to save the world.

He knew there would be backlash and people who were against the idea on the very principle of the thing but he had been facing that most of his life so he wasn’t going to let some council member tell him no when his plan was the only thing with the potential to work against extraterrestrial threats that they had no hope against otherwise. He had a plan.


	9. Natasha Romanov

Her backstory wasn’t anything to talk about. She would prefer that it remain hidden: just a part of her history that she couldn’t rewrite and that she never wanted to talk about. It was what had made her who she was, it was how she had gotten to where she was. Without the blood and the death and secrets and lies an monstrosities, there would have been no cause for Clint to take her out. There wouldn’t have been the hope for redemption that would have set her on a completely different path.

She wasn’t going to be a hero, not like the rest of them, not with her background, but she could try and make amends for the monstrosities. She could try and do better, go after the bad guys of the world instead of running with them. She could find a new position in the world and try and land on her feet.

She wasn’t a hero, her value of worthiness was not a question she needed answered. She knew that she could never truly make amends but she could do her best. She could set her course right, set her life right, save the world, save some innocent people, save a man who needed to see the goodness in himself, she could find a family, be a godmother, be an auntie, be a friend, be someone who she could ultimately say she was proud to be. She had traded up, still a spy, still fighting her way out, but now she had a family around her.


	10. Clint Barton

He was the eyes in the sky, perched in an alcove overseeing the chaos as it unfolded before his eyes. He was sitting with the bowstring drawn tight against his cheek, target in sight, the rain beating down fierce and fast on the scene. There was the unknown and the expected and there was the archer ready to deal with whatever he needed to. There was the man with the hidden family and the retirement plan, the spy leading a double life that was so secretive that he could pretend to everyone he called his friends that it didn’t exist until there was no other option but to reveal it. He could stand in the middle of a battle with nothing more than some modified arrows and help to any extent that he could. There was the fire and the portals opened in the sky and the aliens flying around the city and the instructions being shouted at, the strays to wrangle in, the dealing with egos and Gods and living legends and being a part of something bigger. There was the artificial intelligence and the robots and the getting shot at and the flying city crashing to the ground. There were the disagreements, and the renovations and the pregnancies and the family time he was neglecting to go be with his other family. There was the balance in between being an Avenger, and being the family man that his wife and children needed him to be.


	11. Thor

There was the prince ready to claim something that he was not ready for. There was the almost childish ego that made him think that he was untouchable, that he could do no wrong. There was the arrogance and the easy laughter, one who thought he could just saunter into any fight and come out a winner. There was the child who had to grow into the man he truly could be; who had to lose everything he thought he knew in order to find the true strength within himself. 

There was the warrior who knew he wasn’t fit to rule. The man content to fight the battles that needed fought. The man who knew his place was not upon the throne he had once longed for so dearly. He fought the battles of the people of Midgard when his brother decided to take them over. He fought the battles of his people when the Dark Elves made a reappearance in the Asgardian narrative. He fought the battles for his friends, on whatever homeworld they happened to be on, when they called on him to be there.

There was the king who finally accepted his role. There was the man who knew the value of friendship and family who was ready to lead his people across the galaxy until they found a new home. They were Asgard and they were his to look after and protect and he knew that he would do what he needed to do to make sure that his people were safe.


	12. Loki

The only true ruler to a throne that he would never inherit, the boy who was born to be a king and raised wrapped in blankets of secrecy and lies. He was the silver tongued prince, the God of Mischief, the manipulator, the prince who wanted to have the power over others. He wanted them to bow down and kneel at his feet and accept his greatness. There was always a feeling that he never quite fit in with the people who were his supposed equals so instead he turned to those beneath him and tried to get them to give him the gratification he never truly felt he had. He was a lost boy, drifting in space, corrupted by power and the ideas of great beings. He was the one who looked into the heart of the Tesseract and stole the secrets it offered up to him.

He was the lost boy who cut himself off from a family that never deserted him. The family who had raised him was the one that loved him and for the faults in the story and the treatment he still loved them. He had tried to prove himself worthy of them, and then better than them, and then he accepted that the best he could do was prove that he was just as good as the rest of them. He could help them escape, help them beat true evil, he could overcome the temptation to follow power and he could stand by his brother’s side as they went together towards whatever lay in the future for them.


	13. Odin

There was a time, eons ago, when the world was a different place than it was now. There was not the same order, not the same knowledge, not the same assumption that things had always been a certain way. They had to get things to that place and they fought hard and bloody in order to reign in the universe and unite worlds under one order. It was a golden age of fighting and bloodshed, but it was swept under the rug when it was over. When the daughter became too much, wanted too much, she was hidden away as a remnant of time now past.

Then came the son and the peace and the prosperity of it. The world had risen from death and black and now the sun shone over golden palaces and splendour. There was a silver edge to the sun, a sliver that hung on the side of the golden orb that seemed such a constant fixture that no one questioned why or when it had appeared. That was the way things were for so long.

Then the secrets came out, started spilling out until the truth lay cold and desolate upon the world. It was a sleep that he may not wake from, a son falling off the edge, a wife becoming one with the stars and dust, and another betrayal.

There was the feeling of calm when age caught up, when the moments counted down to the end. There was fields of green, a blue sky, a soft wind, an isolated moment of peace and resolution and then nothing.


	14. Steve Rogers

A small sickly boy from Brooklyn who was watching all the guys he knew, all the men he passed on the street, go off to try and defend their country, to protect everyone, to fight the battle that needed fought. He saw them go off to do their duty and knew that he had no right to do any less than the rest of them, even if his body and illnesses were trying to prevent him from ever enlisting. It wasn’t about going off to kill the bad guys, it was about duty and honour and doing the right thing. He was just a kid from Brooklyn who didn’t like bullies and wanted his fair chance to put them in the right place.

He was smart and he tried hard and he outwitted them until they gave him nothing more than a chance to become something bigger than what he was. It was a chance to level out the playing field, to give him a hero’s body to match the strength of his conviction and will. They gave him the chance that he needed to prove himself, and that’s what he did. They made him a dancing monkey, a performer in their circus show until he remembered what he was fighting for.

There would always be a war to be one, another battle to fight, but he stuck to his principles and he stuck by who he believed in. It was the brothers that he fought side by side with, the people that went through hell with him, those were the people that reminded him why he was fighting.


End file.
